Thermophiles, as is known in the world of microbiology, are bacteria that grow in heated environments. That is, they thrive in conditions of 45 to 75 degrees centigrade and grow best within the range of 50-60 degrees centigrade. This translates to 122 to 140 degrees fahrenheit as the preferred range. Among thermophiles the most heat resistant are known as the "sporeforming thermophiles". Specifically the two most common are clostridium and bacillus. The effect thereof in the canning process will become evident from a reading of the material to follow.
Normally during a canning season in California, a cannery experiences only a few days of work wherein the products canned later turn spoiled. This few days of bad product can and did amount last year for one cooperative canner in a $350,000.00 loss. The loss or spoilage manifests itself to cans swelling up and in many instances actually exploding in the warehouses within three (3) to four (4) days after the canning process. Since canned goods are serialized, it is usually easy to isolate a batch that has or may be spoiled, and discard same. Unfortunately the spoilage determinations are always made after the fact. This results not only in lost fruit, but also lost production time, and lost cans as well.
One cannery known to the inventor hereof, which is located in Oregon, lost forty percent (40%) of its canned pears in a recent year to product spoilage. It is my contention that this spoilage arose, and the spoilage of product in other canneries arises, due to an excessive amount of sporeforming thermophiles in the syrup water.
All canneries are designed to employ several water sources, for the various tasks of the cannery. But, every cannery known to the inventor has but a single well source of water for the syrup dilution in the syrup room. Since syrup dilution (from 70-80% down to 8-12%) is one of the foremost aspects of canning, it is believed that human error can be avoided according to current cannery technology by utilizing only water from one well in the syrup room. I say well source, because the U.S.D.A. will not permit water that has been chlorinated to be used in the canning of food.
Several years ago the inventor of the instant technique set out to determine why the spoilage took place. I theorized that the problem might lie in the well water used in the syrup room, even though I knew that the canning process involved high heat, high enough to kill about 1000 thermophiles per milliliter of water-syrup mixture in any given canned fruit.
It is an object therefore of this invention to provide a process for avoiding canned fruit spoilage.
It is another object to provide a process for determining times likely in the canning period when spoilage will occur.
It is yet another object to provide a method to avoid canned fruit product spoilage once the likelihood thereof is ascertained.
A further object is to provide an improved cannery layout that will be able to avoid the canned fruit spoilage problem.
Other objects of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part appear hereinafter.
The invention accordingly comprises the method involving the several steps and the relation and order of one or more of such steps with respect to each of the others, and to the apparatus possessing the the construction, combination of elements and arrangement of parts which are exemplified in the following detailed disclosure and the scope of the application of which will be indicated in the appended claims.
For a fuller understanding of the nature and objects of the invention, reference should be had to the following detailed description taken in connection with the accompanying drawings.